Tuesday, 31 January 2012

It's deadline day! Players are moving clubs, money is being spent - it's just all so exciting! Let's look at some things that have happened so far.

For those of you who don't know, that picture is from "Supermarket Sweep". You basically ran around a supermarket throwing things into your trolley and then those things are yours. Don't confuse the not paying part with real life, please.

Wenger has kept all the Arsenal fans happy by signing a 13 year old called Thomas Eisfeld from Borussia Dortmund. He plays in midfield and will probably be amazing by the time he is 24 and ready to move to Barcelona.

image from totalfootballmadness.com

Ravel Cunt Features Morrison has moved to West Ham from Manchester United for an undisclosed fee. He wanted about £1m a week and is a gargantuan penis so Fergie told him to beat it, kicking him up the arse as he went. Expect to see him scoring a few wonder-goals before he gets arrested for mugging an old granny.

image from redflagflyinghigh.com

Martin Olsson was really lonely at Blackburn so they signed his twin brother Marcus. Steve Kean's plan is that he can make one carry out crimes while the other is standing next to him, so nobody will know. His first mission is to steal the crown from the Tower of London so if you see either of the Olsson twins around there, be sure to kick them in the face to stop the heist. That applies to the girl singers too.

Bolton have signed Ryo Miyaichi from Arsenal on loan, continuing Owen Coyle's tradition of taking decent young players and allowing them to blossom into the international superstars they threaten to become. Rumours that Ken, Guile and E. Honda were also close to signing have not been confirmed.

QPR have signed Djibril Cisse for £4m and are close to sorting out Bobby Zamora's contract. The rumours are he that wants £90,000 a week which simply cannot be true. It's Bobby Zamora for fuck's sake. If they manage to get those two together up front, then that is a good day's shopping so well done to Mark Hughes.

Liam Ridgewell has signed for West Brom from Birmingham so has now played for pretty much every team in Birmingham, proving once and for all that he really does not give a shit about anything other than money, or playing in the Premier Leauge. I don't really know but I'm hoping he gets booed, a lot. Is booed a word? If it is, I have no idea how to spell it. That looks right now though.

Wayne Bridge has moved to Sunderland on loan from Man City so let's hope for everyone's sake that this works out better than his West Ham loan. He was responsible for some of the worst footballing performances I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. Then again he is playing for Martin O'Neill - that man could buy Darren Mackie and within a month he'd be the most prolific striker the Premier League has ever seen. It's like he injects his players with confidence AIDS.

Sunderland have also "clinched" the loan signing of Sotirios Kyrgiakos. I can only imagine how tough it was to fight off the competition for that guy. Martin O'Neill had to not only complete the 1st round of Ninja Warrior, but he also had to tackle the 'Travel-ator' from Gladiators just to be able to get close to the Greek defender, despite the fact that he is a complete donkey.

Fulham are going to sign Pavel Pogrebnyak, who used to be really good in Football Manager so I assume might be in real life. I remember he was considered Russia's best striker for a while but then got injured for the Euros and up stepped Pavlyuchenko to score a few goals and trick us all into thinking he was really good. Those crafty Russians and their cold wars and pretend star soccer players.

Which brings us neatly on to Pavlyuchenko, who is probably going to be sold back to someone in Russia. Nobody really cares, not even Roman Pavlyuchenko. I've never seen anyone give less of a fuck about anything, ever.

The "biggest" signing of the day has been Jelavic from Rangers to Everton. It was probably for around the £7m mark but that's really just a guess. David Moyes is fucking terrible at spending what little money Everton have so I fully expect him to be absolutely dreadful and end up back in the SPL within two years. Most likely at Celtic, where he will score a hat-trick against Rangers and World War 3 will start. For about four hours, when the Buckfast wears off.

Elsewhere in Scotland, numerous players I have never heard of signed for various mediocre teams. Jorge Claros, Daniel Uchechi, Roy O'Donovan, Pa Saikou Kujabi, Jordan McMillan, Pawel Brozek, Milos Lacny and so on and so on. Aberdeen did sign Gavin Rae and I know who he is. That's exciting.

Oh and don't expect any other news today. They stop all wars and natural disasters for the transfer deadline.

Chelsea have signed Kevin de Bruyne from Genk for £6.7m or £9m, depending what Newspaper you read. I have no idea who this guy is, which is funny because neither does Andre Villas-Boas.

It would appear that they signed one of the Weasley twins, probably the one that didn't die. Andre Villas-Boas has come out and said that he had nothing to do with this singing, which must make him feel great. The signing appears to be one for the future, they are actually punting him back to Belgium on loan for the rest of the season and probably next season.

AVB has said that he also had no say in the signing of the giant evil spirit monster, known simply as Lukaku but he did say that he has a lot of talent. He has to say that or else he will be eaten in his sleep. The January transfer deadline is shit. You can see that guy on Sky Sports News with about twenty phones, slowly dying inside as he has to pretend to be excited about seeing Jimmy Clubfoot sign for Rushden Diamonds for a Cadbury's Creme Egg. This after spending the entire day outside the stadium, having to talk to countless drunken, unemployed mongs. Actually, the transfer deadline is ace.

Everyone has a special friend. Mine is my cat Bert, he's a ginger twat but he's brilliant. Bert has never given me $145,000 as a present. In fact the only thing he has given me is a dead mole and cat AIDS.

It really does sound like Milan Mandaric was in love with Harry Redknapp, either that or this is a terrible fucking tactic his lawyer has told him to employ. Mandaric was in court today to answer questions about Harry Redknapp's rather odd money management.

To break it down, between the 1st of April 2002 and the 28th of November 2008, Mandaric ALLEGEDLY paid £145,000 into Redknapp's account in Monaco. Then a sum of $150,000 was paid into the same account between the 1st of May 2004 and the 28th of November 2007 ALLEGEDLY. Coincidentally if you have a bank account in Monaco, you don't have to pay tax or national insurance.

Mandaric said this -

"I have never had a closer relationship with a manager than I had with Harry."
"I wanted to do something special for Harry because he means more to me than a football manager. This was something as a friend."

and after Harry left for Southampton he said this-

"We didn't speak - it was a little bit of a bitter divorce,"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. He also mentioned how Harry would pick him up and they would drive for hours all around town. No wonder his wife banned them from being friends. He was always a bad influence on little Harry was that young Milan Mandaric.

Remember Lee Hughes? Yeah, he's the bald guy that killed somebody in a car crash and then fled the scene. Now he's been charged with sexual assault. He sounds about as nice as he looks.

bfcblog.co.uk

Hughes was arrested last month and has now been charged for sexual assault. Of course that doesn't mean he is guilty. He was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving and leaving the scene of an accident but that doesn't make him a racist. A scum-bag? Yes. A rapist? Maybe but we don't know for sure so lets not get sued. Unfortunately for him he looks like a rapist but of course that's no basis for judging someone on. I mean look at Demarcus La Shonda, he looks like a big teddy-bear.

The 33 year old converted to Islam whilst in prison and even apologised upon his release. He once raised £5,000 for charity so I think we can all agree that he has turned his life around and is now definitely an all round great guy. Perhaps one day, the world will all know the name of Lee Hughes and his grand contributions to charity and society as a whole. Or perhaps he will be found guilty. Life is full of surprises.

Sunday, 29 January 2012

Lothar Matthaus is one of the greatest footballers of all time. He is also a massive helmet. That means dick head to those of you not familiar with that particular insult. Now 51, Lothar is famous for being outspoken (a twat) and shagging around. He plans to show us "the real me" in an eight-part reality TV show.

Matthaus was a fantastic player - he could do pretty much everything and could absolutely destroy the ball with both feet. He won the European Championship in 1980, the World Cup in 1990 and ended up going to five World Cups in total. He is considered a legend for Inter, Bayern and Germany but since he retired he has become more famous in his home country for his tabloid antics.

Married four times, he is a big fan of the ladies. His last wife was 21 years old when they got married, he was 47. They have since split up and he is shagging someone else so he hopes the TV series will show us all what a lovely man he really is and that his reputation isn't a fair portrayal of his true personality. Unfortunately the shower and bedroom are off limits.

A coupe of choice quotes from the man himself -

"The Dutch are all arseholes, Adolf probably forgot you."

"Hey girls, our black player has the longest appendage. " - directed at a women's basketball team

"A Lotthar Matthaeus will not be defeated by his body, a Lothar Matthaeus will decide his fate himself."

I wonder if Harry Redknapp would be up for having a camera crew follow him around all day? Make up your own punch-line.

Nothing like a massive generalisation to kick things off. I'm probably late writing about this, I was out drinking, watching football and being a lad yesterday so this is already old news. Liverpool fans booed Evra, this was to be expected, I mean how dare he report Suarez for saying something racist to him........10 times. One fan in particular really didn't like Evra so he decided to make a monkey gesture.(allegedly)

Looks more like a chimp to me but that's probably not the point. Kenny Daglish said they boos directed at Evra were just a bit of "banter". I actually watched the video of the chap above on YouTube. The majority of the comments are from Liverpool fans saying things like "how do you know that was directed at Evra?" "how do you know he wasn't just pretending to be a monkey for the lolz?". My personal favourite was someone who tried to write "racist slur" but accidentally typed "racist slut".

Their fans' also sung "there's only one lying bastard". Their stupidity knows no bounds. The lovely chap above has been detained by the police and hopefully the video and photograph have been circulated. By the time he is released from jail his friends, family and work colleagues will know about the incident and his life should be ruined forever. Then again this happened in Liverpool, they've probably built a statue of him outside Anfield.

Well done Arsenal, you won a game! Have a big, fat, patronising pat on the back. Things were deliciously hilarious at half time but thankfully for me, the Gooners came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 and most importantly, I won my bet.

the Guardian

That's a lovely photo. At half-time boos were ringing around around the Emirates cafe. Aston Villa had about two shots on goal in the first half and scored twice. Arsene Wenger borrowed Alex Ferguson's hair dryer at half -time and presumably shouted at his players for being really shit. Then he pooped everywhere or whatever it is that owls do.

Three goals in about five seconds in the second half, swiftly turned things around. RVP scored two penalties, which were the bread to Walcott's goal sandwich filling. After the game, Walcott said he's really good at ping-pong, perhaps he should think about changing his profession because he is terrible at football. I say terrible, he is better than 99% of everyone in the world who plays football but it's fun to take the piss out of him isn't it?

Could Arsenal win the FA Cup? Yes. Will they? Probably not. Will Metesacker do something hilarious like score a 30 yard own goal? Most likely.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is young and played quite well in 70 minutes of football so therefore IS THE BEST PLAYER THAT ENGLAND HAS EVER HAD AND OH MY GOD EURO 2012 !!!!111!!!!1!!!!!

Arsene Wenger has talked up the young winger's chances of making the Euro 2012 England squad, echoing the calls of journalists nation wide who have nothing better to write about. Don't let the fact that he's played about 3 hours of football all season fool you, he's more than ready to take on Europe's elite this summer. Wenger told the BBC:

"If he does well, why not? It is not because you are young that you cannot play. We live in a world of immediacy.

"I would not have expected him to be so mature in September because he still looked like a boy.

"Now suddenly he looks like he can take pressure and that he has the personality to produce under pressure."

If I'd just taken that middle quote on its own I could have made a whole different story out of this one, but I didn't. It's called being mature guys - I guess some of us are just more grown up than others. Especially Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who Wenger wants to molest.

David de Gea played well against Liverpool on Saturday, didn't he? Ho ho ho only joking. The last time I saw someone look that uncomfortable was when I tried to explain the adult phone number on the bill to my Dad. I mean my friend. Wait, what did you say?

Manchester United signed the keeper for a heap of money this summer because Atletico Madrid kinda wanted him to keep being their first choice keeper since he was quite good. Now de Gea looks like he might have to live on the bench for the rest of the season after his latest blunders and wait until he's all grown up. SAF said:

"Other keepers make similar mistakes and nothing gets said.

"In my opinion two bad goals to give away but to blame everything on the keeper is totally wrong. The lad will be a top keeper, he is only young. Harsh to blame him for everything."

Anders Linegaard is currently rubbing his hands together and cackling since putting David de Gea out on a football pitch in public just now is about as reliable as resting your pint on the slanted part of the quiz machine. It might look safe but I assure you it isn't. It isn't safe at all.

Remember when Wimbledon was a football club and not a sporting event for posh people? Those were the days. Then someone built a fake city out of cardboard boxes, called it Milton Keynes and a whole new team was invented! Except the same as the old team. Anyway, Alan Smith is going there on loan.

'Smudger' as he's known, actually earns around £60,000 a week which is fucking staggering when you consider how abominably terrible he is. His career has hit such phenomenal heights that League One's MK Dons are the only club in the world interested in signing him and considering he started his career as a striker, a scoring rate of no goals in 77 games for Newcastle should give some indication as to why he doesn't play very much. If he was a horse he would have been put down by now, is what I'm trying to say.

Liverpool are so desperate to get rid of Andy Carroll and make some of the £35million they spent on him back that they are rumoured to have offered him to Manchester City in exchange for Carlos Tevez. Manchester City said no. Shockingly.

This could of course be absolute nonsense, and I'm going to assume it is, since Kenny Dalglish spends 80% of his time defending the striker. According to The Guardian, Liverpool offered the out of form geordie to Manchester City last Thursday, who immediately turned it down with the reasoning that "he's shit". Although Mancini has in past stated that he admires Carroll, City already have lumbering powerhouse Edin Dzeko so adding a young, misfiring battering ram to their squad doesn't make an awful lot of sense.

The only way Liverpool are going to get anything back from their £35million at this rate is if he starts laying eggs because watching Carroll play football at the moment is actually painful. It looks like if Herman Munster had a stroke and then chased his yo-yo down a hill.

Rangers have no money left because in the 80s they cheated and bought heaps of people they couldn't afford, ruined Scottish football and now no-one watches it, thus they can't make any money. I think it's great.

from footballisfootball

Walter Smith is very concerned for Rangers and fears that they may go back to not winning the league every single year if their finances continue in the same way. Their only really good player wants to leave immediately and because I'd rather watch a giraffe being kicked to death than any SPL match outside of ones I'm obliged to be at, there isn't an awful lot of good news coming his way.

"I felt they needed four or five new players at playing level, not squad level, to bolster the team.

"There hasn't been that major investment and it starts to become (impossible).

"With injuries to Steven Whittaker, Kyle Lafferty and Steven Naismith especially, there are no adequate replacements and the team suffers.

"Not getting the amount or the standard of players in is beginning to tell. There's still an opportunity to get players in, but it looks like they're not going to be able to spend a lot of money." (BBC)

I actually met Walter Smith once and to my pleasure he was actually very nice. To put this into context, if before I met him someone had told me that the entire Rangers squad and all their supporters had been banished to a torture chamber for all eternity and the stadium had collapsed into a hole in the ground, I would have been delighted. If you told me now I'd think, 'That's a shame about Walter Smith'.

Saturday, 28 January 2012

Hate filled prejudice mongers The Daily Mail ran a story today about the fact that Luis Suarez is having English lessons. Clearly the only reason for this is so that he can learn to be less racist, since all of these damn foreigners that come to our country don't understand our culture enough.

Of course Luis Suarez is simply trying to learn English so that he can speak English, and I'm pretty sure that he's been learning for a while now. He speaks Dutch quite well already, and his native Spanish has landed him in a bit of trouble, which means that he's actually probably more cultured than any Daily Mail writer ever. Their idea of speaking a foreign language is staying as far away from the brown people as possible incase they try and make conversation. "I DON'T WANT TO BUY ANYTHING FROM YOU, YOUNG MAN" they say, "But I need to take your order, sir" replies the waiter in their ski resort.

Harry Redknapp, as you may be aware, is currently in court answering charges of tax evasion. In the last few days one of his main explanations for being incapable of committing such an act is that he can't spell.

Someone else made that jpeg, though it does bare an uncanny resemblance to that Rooney one I did a few months ago. Ahhhh well. Am I still annoyed at that? Yes. 64 year old Harry Redknapp told the jury, or court, or ancient council:

"I am completely and utterly disorganised. I am not going to fiddle taxes, I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me."

He added: "My accountant runs my life. I do not receive my wage slips, they go straight to him. I do not see bank statements. I've a big problem - I can't write."

He added: "I write like a two-year-old and I can't spell". (The Sun)

Redknapp also claims not to know what an email is or how those naked pictures of Megan Fox appeared on his iPad. "They just appeared themselves din't they" he was rumoured to have said, "but I'm really glad most of those kind of sites worked a way around not having Flash. Uhhh I mean what's Flash?"

OK so I'm about a day or two behind on a couple of stories but the other day Bayern Munich announced the signing of a major striker would be revealed at 2pm if people went to a certain site and liked their Facebook page. Guess what actually happened.

So once everyone went to the page and eagerly anticipated the new signing (could it be Berbatov?! Tevez?!!) Bayern said "oh hey thanks guys, we never knew we had so many friends! BTW there's no new striker but thanks for coming" and then the internet was like FUUUUUUUUUUUU

After the initial outrage subsided, Bayern offered an official apology on the site:

Sorry dear fans, as we see from your numerous comments, you are very upset about the today's action.

It was not our intention to disappoint you with the new app. Rather, we wanted to provide you with this action in the Center and thus show how important is each fan for Bayern Munich.

That's like a girl inviting a guy back to her house with the promise of the most amazing night of sexual fun ever but then actually just talking and crying about her dying grandmother. It would have been less awkward if I hadn't already taken off most of my clothes. There really aren't many ways out of that one.

Carlo Ancelotti has signed Alex from Chelsea to play for his new look PSG team and he paid £4.2million for the privilege. Business.

At times Alex looks like he needs someone else to tuck his shirt in for him, but at others he seems to be a truly monstrous figure, scaring attackers away with a simple manic stare. Although some strikers think he's sussing them out with his eye focusing, it's actually quite likely he's looking for their name badge so he can invite them to his birthday party. He has balloons there. And if you listen carefully you can hear the banging of floor boards as a dozen prisoners try to escape from his basement before he makes them drink anymore pretend tea. Sometimes the friendliest menials are the most terrifying. Look at Timmy Mallet - sure he looks like fun on TV but if you saw a guy dressed like that down a dark alley would you go and say hi? I did. He was quite nice.

Manchester United don't believe in signing good young players anymore because they all just move to Real Madrid at some point or another. They also don't want to bring anymore through the youth teams because Ryan Giggs keeps encouraging them to 'go out shagging' with him or something.

As a solution to the lack of midfield support in the Old Trafford ranks, Alex Ferguson has identified former Germany captain Michael Ballack as the man to turn the club's form around. Although he is 35 years old, using modern day cloning techniques, SAF plans to build an army of younger Ballacks which will be ready just in time for the 2030 season when David Weir will finally have to admit that he's actually been dead for centuries but being a vampire gets very boring after a while and he needed something to do. You don't get to have awesome vampire sex like in True Blood when you look like David Weir. Just trying to bite into some potential victims in Glasgow backfires when you realise that instead of blood they are filled with sausage mince.

Former Aston Villa and wherever he went after that player Lee Hendrie has just been declared bankrupt, which is great timing considering he is now even worse at football than he was when he earned money.

That picture looks like someone is wearing Lee Hendrie's skin in order to pretend to be him. His face doesn't look quite right. It could well be that Lee has actually been kidnapped by aliens and one of them is currently walking the earth in his body, making ill judged financial decisions all over the globe but this sounds like rather a lot of work to ruin the life of someone I had completely forgotten was alive, so may not be as plausible as the actual suggestion that Lee Hendrie is a retard and spent all of his money on baby bel and garden furniture.

The joke's actually on you because Lee is now playing for Kidderminster Harriers, the mightiest of the Harriers. He also has a yard sale on just now where you can buy burnt garden furniture, because that's what he does with his spare time now. That and cry.

Friday, 27 January 2012

Jack Wilshere has had a 'small setback' in his recovery from an ankle injury which has resulted in him injuring his ankle even more. The injury is potentially severe enough to rule him out of England's brief appearance at Euro 2012.

from top news.in

Arsene Wenger said he didn't want to go into too much detail about the injury sustained by Wilshere because he didn't really know enough. And that's it. I think the best thing to do in this situation is to all hold hands and probably for the girls to take their tops off. Don't ask me why, I'm not a doctor. All I have is belief and sometimes that's all you need to see boobs.

Thursday, 26 January 2012

You've probably noticed that one of us (me) loves Football Manager. I don't really ever have free time to play it these days, which sounds like a lie considering I'm always on my laptop.....shut up. Anyway I've had them right back to the days of my sexy Amiga and today I read about two of my favourite players from days gone by so I thought I'd write about it and that's what I'm doing right now.

Firstly Zlatan Muslimovic from Champ Manger 01/02 fame. He is about 30 years old and looks like this -

zimbio.com

Look at the state of Pepe in that photograph. I demand a scientist carry out tests on this specimen and prove to me that he is a human. Muslimovic has been training with a few clubs in Britain over the last few weeks and it looks as if West Ham are going to offer him a deal. He's probably only got about 12 for stamina and 10 for pace these days but I imagine his concentration and team work are at least 18. He gets a 20 for sexiness.

Phillip Mulryne was an attacking midfielder who loved a goal. He actually started at Manchester United but moved to Norwich city to get a game. He used to look like this -

Injury ravaged his career. Well that and his fatness. After retiring, he thought long and hard about what he wanted to do with the rest of his days. Then decided he wanted to become a Catholic Priest which I didn't see coming, especially after I googled "Phillip Mulryne" and some heavily-breasted, vacuous tart came up as the fourth image result.

Becoming a Catholic Priest doesn't just involve developing a deep love of all things God made like impressionable male children. You actually have to get a degree, which consists of two years of philosophy and four years of theology. Fair play to Phil for actually finding his "true calling" because it certainly makes a change from the usual alcohol, drug and gambling addictions that most retired footballers take up full-time after they stop playing. Different? Yes. More fun? Probably not.

Chelsea are reportedly in the hunt for Willian, one of those Brazilian players who looks really good on Football Manager. He left Brazil at a young age for the riches of Russia or Ukraine, or one of those weird places and angry newspaper 'the Daily Mail' reckon that Chelsea have already tested the water with a £16.5m bid for him.

Willian is unashamedly whoring himself out to the London club because he's already got two friends there in Luiz and Ramires, Andre Villas-Boas is building something special and Chelsea have a culture of winning trophies. Yup, that's almost every box ticked.

Willian is not to be confused with will.i.am, who is of course the cool guy from The Black Eyed Peas. Will.i.am is one of those people who is amazing at everything, so I imagine if he did want to play for Chelsea he probably could after a few weeks of training. He's almost as cool as Andre 3000 from Outkast who could also definitely play professional football if the FA allowed him to wear a hat at all times.

I once saw a video of Snoop Dogg playing football with David Beckham where Snoop lost about a million cool points with every toe punt he made. It was truly hideous. I'm now just naming cool black people so I'll stop.

It takes a special effort for the stupidity of a footballer to stand out amongst the thousands of registered idiots playing professional football. Leigh Griffiths can certainly be described as special.

stv

The Hibs striker has just received his third ban for making offensive gestures to the fans. Out of his three bans, two of them were for gestures towards his own supporters. His most recent was against St.Johnstone last weekend. Hibs are pretty terrible and the fans know this so when Leigh went over to take the corners they took out their frustration on the poor wee soul, shouting "you're a dick" and other such things.

Being one of their only good players, he was pretty pissed off. Cameras picked up the striker retaliating with a rebellious middle-finger to the stands. In fairness to Leigh, they definitely deserved it. It's hilarious how fans are allowed to shout literally anything (except racisms) at a player and not be punished in any way. I said hilarious, I meant really fucking stupid. Anyone who goes to watch football games know that the stewards do absolutely nothing, scared of the inevitable back-lash they will receive from a drunken, aggressive loud-mouth.

"I do want to issue an apology. I did it out if sheer stupidity but I can tell you now it won't happen again."

Yes, he definitely won't do it again. The SFA have given him a two-game ban and his manager isn't happy. I only read the first sentence but found it so utterly ridiculous that his manager tried to defend him, that I stopped reading.

Forgotten man Alexander Hleb completely fucked his own career when he left Arsenal for the glamour of Barcelona and then learned that sitting on the bench isn't very fun. Now they are set to release him from his contract, Liverpool and QPR have boners.

image from the guardian.co.uk

In this rare picture of Hleb in a Barca shirt he looks sort of happy, but what followed on from this moment was a world of misery. He even had to go to Birmingham for a while. Wolfsburg just cut his loan spell with them short because he was so terrible, so unfit, out of form and beyond repair that they couldn't even bare to look at him anymore. His face they said, is "like an unwanted labrador". I made that up.

The winger/midfielder earns around £90,000 a week at the Catalan giants and clearly no-one is going to pay that except someone mental like Liverpool, who do seem to sign people based purely on reputation. Didier Drogba could be decapitated and Dalglish would still consider it a 'risky but worthwhile move'. For £70million.

Gareth Barry is the second most boring footballer in the world after Theo Walcott. Just looking at his gormless face fills me with such rage that I want to put my head through my television, but now he's revealed that he turned down Liverpool two years ago because of a song he heard the fans sing, which I guess is enough to write a story on.

You may remember Gareth best from his time at Aston Villa before he left for mountains of cash at the Etihad stadium. Back then he was a down to earth kinda guy, playing football for fun, until one day he heard Liverpool fans singing "you can stick your Gareth Barry up your arse" in reference to the fact that Xabi Alonso was pwning the midfield while Barry was linked to the Anfield side.

The midfield man told The Sun that that made his mind up when both Liverpool and Man City came in to buy him from Villa in 2008 and that it definitely didn't have anything to do with cash. After the interview he rode off on his gold bicycle to laugh at poor people.

QPR have begun their epic search for players that will keep dreams of remaining a Premier League team alive. They've started by raiding the cupboards of the decent clubs and finding a Nedum Onuoha, shivering behind some digestive biscuits.

image from soccerambassador.blogspot.com

The 25 year old hasn't really featured at all under Roberto Mancini and had found himself behind Stefan Savic, the man that loves to give, in the defensive pecking order. This is the equivalent of you being replaced by Barney the Dinosaur in your office.

Expect Roque Santa Cruz to appear at QPR quite soon since Mark Hughes' scouting network seems to extend as far and wide as 'players I have been on a bus with'.

I told you that players in the African Cup of Nations do bat shit crazy stuff and so to prove it here is a video I stumbled upon featuring a nomination for 'the world's worst actor ever', beating even Nicolas Cage to the Oscar nominations list this year.

This is from the game that Equatorial Guinea won against Senegal yesterday and as we can see, the performance alone is breathtaking. Sure, The Artist might just be one of the best films I've seen in recent times but could I watch it again and again, enjoying it more each time? Possibly. Either way, this guy is a dick. That's what I was trying to say here.

Former Rangers and now ex-Leicester left back Michael Ball, has been fined £6000 by the FA for sending a homophobic tweet to someone on Coronation Street. It's 2012 now people! COME ON!

This guy was actually quite a highly regarded talent in his early years but managed to never fulfil it, and now he's deliciously unemployed. Leciester cancelled his contract under the pretence of 'mutual consent' because giving the reason 'he's a dick' isn't legal apparently. The offending tweet was sent to Anthony Cotton, who is an "actor" on Coronation Street, and it said:

That fucking queer. Get back to your sewing machine in Corrie you moaning bastard

I only know who this 'Cotton' guy is because I assumed it must be the very camp one on Coronation Street, and so I googled that and I was right. Ironically the real bender in this story is Michael Ball because he gets so annoyed by Coronation Street or 'Im a Celebrity' that he felt it necessary to vent his anti-gay venom into internet land. It's always the ones who hate homosexuals that secretly are, so I think this is actually really brave of Michael Ball to come out right now. If only more players would take this kind of stance perhaps the entire world could just learn to accept each other. *applause*

Weasel faced TV pundit Gary Neville is set to inspire England's Rugby Union team by reminding them of how gratifying it is to punch another human in the face, or by not allowing them to punch him in the face and this firing them up enough to win. Something like that.

That is a pretty terrible drawing of Gary Neville, but whatever. Since winning the Rugby World Cup in 'whatever year that happened' England have possibly been bad at rugby and manager Stuart Lancaster wants to remind them of the passion and pride behind wearing a national jersey. He told the BBC:

"I am trying to remind the players about the pride and honour and standing of being an international rugby player in this country; it is massive,"

"When Gary Neville says it is an honour, it is an honour. And if the players understand that, then you get more responsible behaviour as well."

The most confusing aspect of all of this is how good a pundit Gary Neville actually is on Sky Sports. One half of my brain wants him dropped into a volcano, but the other wants to know what he thinks the most tactically astute way to play Mata and Torres in the same team is. I have no idea if he knows anything about rugby but Lancaster is said to have gotten the idea from Cristiano Ronaldo who hired Gandalf the wizard to get him pumped up early in his career. The only problem is that it back-fired when he started yelling 'You SHALL NOT PASS'. That bit really stuck.

Uefa is trying to combat billionaire owners coming in and buying anything they want in football land by limiting the amount a club is allowed to lose over a three year period and other things I don't really understand.

I really cannot be arsed explaining all the rules these clubs have to meet because first of all I'm not an accountant, and secondly, like I've already said, I don't particularly understand them. The minute I see an article with quotes from financial types I just start thinking about dinosaurs or tits. Basically, clubs aren't allowed to lose more than £37.5million over a two year period, yet most clubs are still WAAAAY over so somehow they have to fix this if they are going to meet the cut off point. Which is soon, I guess? Tomorrow?

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this video of some people singing on the metro in paris. I can't even feign interest in this story anymore.

In an ever so slightly dramatic twist, co-hosts and the lowest ever ranked African Cup of Nations' side Equatorial Guinea kicked Senegal out of the tournament, scoring in the last few seconds to book their place in the quarter finals.

The news will come as a pleasant surprise for Alan Pardew who probably expected Demba Ba and new signing Papiss Demba to at least get to the semis, but now he can finally put Shola Ameobi back to the factory for his MOT. Equatorial Guinea are ranked 151st in FIFA's rankings which makes the victory even better, and when you consider that the winning goal was scored in the 94th minute, you kinda wish you were from Equatorial Guinea to celebrate. Obviously you'd go back to not being poor straight after. But for those 100 minutes or so, you could truly have understood what it was to celebrate your nation. I'm going to eat a scotch pie and insult English people on the street right now. Or as I like to call it, "thursday".

If there's one thing you can say about Jose Mourinho, it's that he's gracious in defeat. In absolutely no way would he try and blame a referee or any other external source for losing. Ever. Except this time.

The Special One criticised the referee in Real's second leg match in the Copa Del Ray with Barcelona, after his side crashed out 4-3 on aggregate, with 8 of his players being booked. The manager has come under fire from retarded Real Madrid fans recently, as Jack pointed out in an earlier article, with some of them annoyed that they sit several points clear at the top of the table, for some reason. The real point of Spanish football is to beat Barcelona, you see. Mourinho told a post-match conference:

"I heard [some players] say it was impossible to win here."

And when asked if he got his tactics wrong he replied:

"No. We played a good game, the players played a very good game. We came here looking to win. We knew we were behind, we were motivated, wanted to win."

Gerard Pique did kind of concede out that the referee was pretty woeful in the game but I still think that trying to kick opposition players very hard isn't the best way to beat them. I think probably the best way to beat them is religion. If Real Madrid can open up and let the vengeful Christian God into their lives, he will help them win every match against Barcelona for the rest of time. Unless Barcelona also let God into their lives.... but then how would God choose who to let win?

Barcelona's Eric Abidal is what romantic journalists call 'a real hero', having overcome cancer and lifting the Champions League trophy straight after in order to say "take that, cancer!". Now he's been to a local hospital and given a £20,000 rolex watch to a child suffering with the disease. And yes, it is going to be hard to make this funny.

The 32 year old French defender was doing the rounds at a local hospital, because apparently footballers are just allowed to wander around the corridors of these institutions with absolutely no hassle. Having overcome liver cancer himself, Abidal was particularly taken with one 15 year old boy suffering with cancer, and donated his own watch to the boy. His father said:

“It was impossible to get Eric to take the watch back. He told me: ‘It doesn’t matter what this is worth. I want your son to be happy.”

“He embraced all of us and continued his visit to other sick children. I looked at my son, and I will never forget the look of happiness in his face. I’d forgotten what he looked like when he was happy. At night he kept switching on the light to look at the watch’s inscription.

“The visit of the players improved the spirit of the children more than any medicine. For my family the great idol will always be Eric Abidal; he is more than a player for us.” (Who Ate All The Pies?)

Now I'd just like to put this out there - as genuinely nice a gesture as this is, I don't think footballers are a better cure for anything than actual medicine. I tried to help my friend out in hospital by getting ex-Aberdeen and Scotland keeper Jim Leighton to visit him but he just started screaming "NOO IT'S NOT MY TIME YET!!!!". Jim tried to pass on his Casio watch as a caring gesture but my friend just shouted "I DON'T WANT YOUR DOOMSDAY CLOCK!".

I say friend, I don't really know who that guy was. Did I mention it wasn't a hospital? I should probably have told Jim about those bits first.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

The President of the German soccer federation has come out and said that it's about time all the top level gay footballers came out and said "I am gay". He is a straight man and isn't a professional footballer, I'm sure they will take his words on board.

That man is Theo Zwanziger and he believes that today's society is far more accepting of homosexuality than previous generations and gay players would be accepted by the fans. Unfortunately, absolutely everything I have experienced at football says this is incorrect and German legend Philip Lahm agrees with me.

Lahm said that footballers are like Gladiators these days - they kill each other and fight tigers and shit. Big Phil says that you, yes you, do not accept homosexuality as "normal" and you will probably shout insults at a player who did come out. Unfortunately he is correct and although if a player did come out he would get thousands of messages of support, he would also get 60,000 people shouting insults at him every week at the games and neanderthals leaving death threats on twitter.

Perhaps one day being gay will be normal and all heterosexuals will have to come out and say "oh by the way I am straight, I just thought you needed to know". Fucking nonsense, who cares if a player is gay? I care if they are shit and play for my team. If they play well, they could be a hermaphrodite for all I care. They could be a cross-dressing, half-man/half-emu but as long as they played for my team I'll love them. However if they play for a rival, I will boo and hiss until my throat is sore. Good old football

It is reported that West Ham have offered £7m for Jelavic. Rangers are "playing it cool", which I find hard to believe. They are in so much debt, I imagine they creamed their pants the second they heard the phone ring.

dailymail

Jelavic looks pretty good but we must always remember that he is playing in the SPL. There are always a few exceptions to the "SPL is shit LOL" rule. Henrik Larsson, Charlie Adam, Stephen Fletcher.......someone else but let's look at the strikers; Kris Boyd, Scott McDonald, Kenny Miller, Gary O'Connor, Derek Riordan, Marco Negri all scored goals for fun at some point in their SPL careers but when they left the country, it was a bit harder. Defenders can actually run in other countries and even pass the ball, unbelievable I know.

Nika Jelavic will leave Rangers, maybe not for the Hammers but for someone down South. Presumably for a Championship team and there he will swim in a sea of mediocrity. He might be good, he might be bad. It doesn't really matter, I'll still hate Rangers. Thanks for reading.

Kari Arnason is probably Aberdeen's sexiest and best player. Too bad he is going to leave in the summer, being an Aberdeen fan is rubbish.

Arnason is probably too good for Aberdeen. Unfortunately for us, he knows this. At one point he it looked like he was going to sign a deal. He talked about how much he enjoyed playing for the fans and blah blah blah. To use a cliched phrase, money talks and bull shit walks.

"We made Kari an exceptionally good offer. However, the player believes he can earn a better deal elsewhere,"

The exceptional offer is believed to be two packs of jaffa cakes a week, plus an unlimited supply of Irn-bru and all the Pittodrie pies he could eat. Arnason will probably fuck off back to a lower league English side where he will earn ten times more than he could ever make at Aberdeen. His bank balance will be healthy but will he be happy? Yes, probably.

Equatorial Guinea are currently co-hosting that there African Cup of Nations and because they pulled off a shock by beating Libya 1-0 in their first match of the tournament, the President's son just gave them a $1million bonus. Most people didn't know that Equatorial Guinea had $1million at all, let alone spare to give to footballers.

As the BBC points out, that country is meant to be pretty poor. I wonder where the money goes?

"It is remarkable that the president's son has managed to find such a large amount of cash to help motivate his team to win. But the question must be, where has this money come from?" Adrian Lovett, Europe director for the campaign group One, told the BBC in a statement.

Uhhh obviously they've been saving up for a long time, Adrian Lovett. Have you heard of a bank account? You aren't supposed to just spend all your money on gin and quavers, you're meant to save it and let it grow so that one day you can buy lots of gin and even more quavers. Often my parents tell me that I don't listen and confuse the information and advice they give me in some way or another, but I remember that life lesson like no other. I particularly enjoyed the part where my Dad turned into a lion to tell me. You wouldn't forget that.

Neymar is awesome and the most exciting footballing prospect in the world since Andri Sigporsson in CM97/98. Now he has a tin statue.

Despite only being 19 years old, Santos have actually put this statue up in their club museum in tribute to their star player, who just won the coveted Puskas award for 'best goal' scored in the last year. Reports that at night the tin statue comes to life and pees all over everything have so far proven hard to provide evidence for, but I know that if I tell enough people that this happens, anything can come true. Maybe the statue is actually Neymar frozen in time. A cocoon, if you will. That's a 'COcoon'. Thought I'd emphasise that bit.

According to Kickette, there may very well exist a sex tape somewhere featuring Shakira and Barcelona defender Gerard Pique. Not be confused with Carlos Puyol. No one wants to see that tape. It would look like a sacrifice.

image from starpulse.com

They are both damn sexy, so this would almost certainly sit on the front page of redtu..... I mean certain adult websites for at least like two hours, until that video where the robot destroys an Asian prostitute anally turns up again. I made that up, but it almost definitely exists.

According to TV Notas,a former employee of Shakira’s did the filming duties for the couple (Ed. Note: huh?!), and if Pique’s woman doesn’t pay up for this person to shut up, the video will be released.

So one of Shakira's employees filmed her banging Gerard Pique.....

I'm sorry I have to go now and fill out a job application.... or furiously wank myself off into the ground..... I just can't work out which to do first! This is going to make the interview really awkward

Anton Ferdinand has reportedly told his 'friends' that he will snub John Terry's attempts to shake his hand after the Chelsea defender allegedly called him (avert your eyes children) a "fucking black cunt". He hasn't been proven guilty however so of course everything is still in the balance.

soccervillage.co.uk

The 26 year old QPR defender hasn't changed his stance in the 'racist-gate' story and maintains that Terry committed the racism, but the England captain categorically denies it. Kind of how you'd expect. As you may recall a certain Luis Suarez was recently banned for 8 games after being found guilty of a sort of similar remark, so the court date on February the 1st should be entertaining. The last time they had one Patrice Evra got a 4 month ban just for looking a bit African, which I think sends a bit of a mixed message. If you want to cut this stuff out you have to get your rules sorted, guys. I can't be expected to keep up with all your jury's verdicts.